Passing a Safety CAT Scan
None of us does anything so complex at the task level that it requires a department, silo, island, or smokestack. We think you get the gist.
IN our work with companies striving to become safety excellence organizations, we've learned the biggest impediment to achieving improved performance is an inability to overcome the conventional "wiz-dumbs" of safety (wrongheaded thinking that impedes progress in the right direction) that inhibit organizational change. As organizational consultant John Drebinger says, "You attain the next level of excellence by changing who you are . . . and you change who you are by changing what you do." We have learned there is one additional preface to effecting sustainable change, and it is: "You will only change what you do when you are willing to change what you believe!"
To truly affect organizational performance (and results), safety leaders must change "what's inside the boxes"--the basic beliefs, values, and prevailing assumptions of their organizations. James Champy, author of "Re-engineering Management," commenting on the limited results generated from corporate "re-engineering" initiatives, observed, "Much of American management doesn't seem willing or equipped to address directly what is often at the real core of operational problems . . . MINDSET!"
To achieve safety excellence, the safety practitioner must facilitate transformational change. By transformational, we don't mean the ordinary run-of-the-mill type of change in conditions and practices, but rather, change of the frame-bending, mind-altering type. Change that affects values, systems, manager practices, and structure. Safety leaders must guide their organizations through a series of Critical Attitude Transitions, an organizational "CAT Scan," so to speak. Following are 12 Critical Attitude Transitions and subsequent actions requisite to attaining safety excellence performance.
CAT 1: A shift from believing "employees are the problem" to understanding "process is the solution."
1. Slash the employee training budget! Stupid people aren't the problem! Double the leadership and management development budgets. Enough said! Well, maybe just a word or two more are in order. Training office staff, shipping clerks, and groundskeepers about the hazards of a confined space, fitting a respirator, or how to lock out process equipment wastes their time and your money. As do most of the 11 other pre-scheduled compliance topics, which have little bearing on most people's work yet are obligated to get a check on the corporate audit score.
CAT 2: A shift from blaming the victims to holding the guilty accountable.
2. Discontinue supervisory accident investigations. They rarely identify the root cause of organizational accidents, unless, of course you're willing to put them behind one-way mirrors, bring in a senior manager lineup, and grant them full immunity. They're supervisors . . . they're not stupid!
CAT 3: A shift from safe as an outcome of a program to safe as an outcome of management systems.
3. Stick your nose everywhere it belongs. Encroach upon the turfs of other functions (sucking out redundancy with a straw), create discomfort with your insurance carrier and brokers (by demanding they do something for those commissions), spend money from one budget account to cover the legitimate needs of another (by fixing problems), and be willing to sacrifice the most sacred cows and longstanding bureaucracies of the organization. If your CEO fires you, congratulations! It worked.
CAT 4: A shift from safety positioned as a staff function to safety integrated into line management operations.
4. Restructure your organization. Require that "shared ownership" replace "forced accountability." Build unified business systems (function to function) and collaborative processes (line and staff, not functional departments. We may not all be in the same boat, but we are all in the same ocean. Imagine washing dishes at home: Does anyone have a children's dishwashing department, a husband's dishwashing department, and a wife's dishwashing department? Or do we just have one process, with one set of tools and equipment to do one task? None of us does anything so complex at the task level that it requires a damned department, or silo, or island, or smokestack. We think you get the gist.
CAT 5: A shift from managing by rules to leading by values.
5. Eliminate "rules trolls" and the folly they produce. Rules are made to address 5 percent of the people (who don't follow them), and they alienate the other 95 percent (who don't need them). Replace rules with values-based process guidelines that delineate systematic methods to be taken by people to reduce risk. The phrase "Thou Shalt" shall be reserved for a single purpose: "Thou Shalt refrain from using the phrase Thou Shalt."
CAT 6: A shift from tolerating excuses to obligating performance.
6. Eliminate, now and forever, the word "accident" from the corporate vocabulary. The term is too commonly perceived (and used) by managers as "a fortuitous, unintended, unexpected, s-happens event," a/k/a an excuse. Replace it with the word "incident" or "operational error," i.e., a foreseeable, predictable, and very manageable event manifesting from a series of operational oversights. Now that all the excuses have been eliminated, hold managers accountable for improving their process and minimizing operational error.
This article originally appeared in the February 2005 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.